Don’t be ashamed to ask.

The shame in the idiom “Don’t be ashamed to ask” is: shame. It means that it is not shameful to ask for advice from those whose status and knowledge are lower than one's own. It describes being humble and eager to learn.

This idiom comes from "The Analects of Confucius. Gongye Chang", which means he is sensitive and eager to learn, and he is not ashamed to ask questions.

Confucius in the Spring and Autumn Period was a great thinker, politician, educator and the founder of Confucianism in my country. People respect him as a saint. However, Confucius believed that no one, including himself, was born with knowledge.

Once, Confucius went to the ancestral temple of the king of Lu to participate in an ancestor worship ceremony. He asked people from time to time and asked about almost everything. Some people laughed at him behind his back, saying that he didn't understand etiquette and had to ask questions about everything. After hearing these discussions, Confucius said: "Asking for clarification on things you don't understand is exactly what I want to know about etiquette."

At that time, there was a doctor named Kong Yu in Weiguo. Yu), open-minded and eager to learn, and upright. At that time, there was a custom in society that after the death of the supreme ruler or other high-status person, he would be given another title, a posthumous title (sound shi). According to this custom, after Kong Yu's death, he was given the posthumous title "Wen", so people later called him Kong Wenzi.

Zigong, a student of Confucius, was a little dissatisfied. He thought that Kong Yu also had shortcomings, so he asked Confucius: "Teacher, why can Confucius and Wenzi be called 'Wen'?"

Confucius replied: "He is smart and eager to learn, and he is not ashamed to ask questions. This is why he is called 'literary'." This means that Kong Yu is smart and studious, and does not consider it as a matter of seeking learning from those whose positions are lower than himself and who are less knowledgeable than himself. It is a shame, so the word "文" can be used as his posthumous title.

This sentence of Confucius led to the idiom "not ashamed to ask". Later, people often used it to describe asking for advice from people whose status and knowledge are inferior to themselves; or to describe being humble, eager to learn, and not self-righteous.